When great is barley adequate

I am in the process of writing my dissertation and as it turns out (surprise) it is quiet hard. It shouldn’t be so hard because most of the research has been done and is published or at least safely tucked away in source code and notes. Yet, I feel an overwhelming urge to run and hide under a desk somewhere every time I open the LaTeX document entitled thesis.tex.  I am sure that my research is good enough to get me the title it’s just that it contains so much of my work (not to mention blood, sweat, tears and sleep deprivation) that I am afraid that when it gets judged it will be a judgement of me as well. So, during every sentence I write I feel like somebody looking over my shoulder muttering “tsk tsk tsk .. you really think that’s good enough?”. This leads to anxiety, anxiety leads to procrastination, procrastination leads to self-loathing and that is the path to the dark side.

But wait .. there might be hope. I realized that I couldn’t write because I demanded that each sentence had to be great just to be adequate for my thesis and when great is barely adequate nothing good can come of it. So I sat down, thought about it and came up with a fix: I am not writing my thesis, I am writing the alpha-version of my thesis. The alpha-version can be crappy, it just has to be a rough first draft which I can edit to become the beta-version which I can give someone to review to become a first release-candidate. This simple relabelling allows me to actually work on my thesis (and it is currently progressing at about 1-2 pages per day).

I almost feel like writing a dissertation (or working on any big project for that matter) is like building a sand castle. You can’t start by engraving the bricks in the towers you have to start by shovelling a lot of sand onto one heap (when I build a sandcastle I am going all in *g* http://xkcd.com/120/).

Doing big things one song at a time

Learning something new or doing something that is time consuming and boring are both things we like to put of and that tend to accumulate at the bottom of the ToDo lists. For a long time I had “learn to juggle” as a project on my someday/maybe list. I never actually came round to doing it because every time I started juggling I realized that it is hard and that it would take a long time to learn it. Instead of just giving up and postponing it to infinity I found a better way. The trick is to do a really small part of it every day. So, every day I would start up my music player, select a song that is about five minutes long and try to juggle as long as the song is playing. Five minutes that is filled with a song I like just flies by and so it isn’t too much of a burden to do it. It took about a month, but now I can juggle (not perfectly but I can go up to 100 throws before dropping a ball).

The good thing about this method is that it is easily applicable to almost everything that seems too big or too complicated to do. Your room is untidy (mine was)? Clean up for one song every day and after a week or two you’re done. 5000 eMails in your Inbox that need sorting? Find a good song everyday and sort emails as long as the song is playing. It will take a long time to finish the job but it will get finished eventually and without the need to ever sit down and “sort 5000 eMails” or “clean the whole apartment”.

When the song is over and you feel like continuing with the task you are of course free to do it but it is critical that you allow yourself to stop doing it as soon as the song is over. If you continue to work on something unpleasant after the song is over your subconscious will remember that and it will be much harder to start the task the next day because your mind thinks “oh damn, I probably have to go on even after the song is done”. If your mind knows “hey, it’s just five minutes and it is over” it will allow you to do it.

A less crowded ToDo list

I had a rush for the last couple of days and my ToDo list is getting less and less crowded. This might just be a natural occurring high but maybe it is due to my new approach to handling my next actions. Over the last few weeks I’ve consequently dealt with “next actions” that were stuck or unpleasant. If they were to big I’ve hacked them to smaller pieces, if they were really unpleasant I’ve scheduled them for a fixed time and if they were unclear I’ve thought about what  really wanted to do with respect to them and redefined them. Furthermore, I’ve adopted a strategy against perfectionism: I just start doing the things and make them in a efficient and solid manner, tick the item of in my ToDo list and then (if I feel it is not good enough, which is seldom the case) add another item to the ToDo list with a concrete improvement.

The most important ideas for owning the ToDo list are:

1. Keep it flowing: if something is on the ToDo list for more than two weeks it should be kicked, reformulated, hacked down into smaller pieces or dealt with in some other way.
2. High throughput is more important than perfection: Do the things quickly and aim for “good” instead of “perfect”. Once you’ve finished you can check if it is good enough and add another item to the list to improve it.
3. Don’t be afraid to discard actions: Just because something is on your ToDo list doesn’t mean you actually have to do it.  If you think about it and come to the conclusion that it is not important, that you don’t have time for it right now or that it is just not feasible right now you are allowed to remove it from the list. You can put it on the someday/maybe or the “ideas for another time” list if you still feel it is important. But, it has to be a conscious decision “not to do it”.
4. Eating frogs: Randy Pausch said it in his awesome lecture on Time Managment “If you have to eat a frog, don’t send too much time looking at it. If you have to eat three frogs don’t start with the small one!

The two weeks rule

I am a firm believer in organizing my work. I just pleases me to tick of things from my to do list because it gives me the feeling of moving my projects forward. I started out with “Getting things done” from David Allen and adapted it to my needs over time which is what I suggest to everyone who has a problem with organization. One addition to the GTD system I found very helpful is my “two weeks” rule for next actions on the to do list. During the weekly review I especially look for next actions of active projects that have been on the to do list for more than 2 weeks. Chances are that these actions are either:

1. Not clearly formulated
2. Not doable
3. Too big
4. Really unpleasant
5. Unimportant

Keeping them on the To-Do list won’t do any good. Since, I haven’t completed them in the last two weeks I probably won’t complete them in the near future. So, you have to either remove them from the To-Do list (if they can just be removed or are not really important) or revise them so that they get moving again. If they are too big you should break them up in smaller, easier pieces. (If “Clean the house” is on the To Do list for two weeks and it is still messy try “Vacuum living room” and “Clean desk” next.) If they are too vague or not clearly formulated you can should remember formulating them as a clear next action (“Maybe start a new fun sport” won’t get done because it is too vague “buy running shoes” or “ask Marc if I can join in the Basketball game” has a better chance of getting done”). Another kind of actions that can survive on the To-Do list for more than two weeks are really unpleasant things like “Make dentist appointment”. These things should just be scheduled for a specific date. It turns out writing “call dentist” in the calendar for next week is very easy but not doing it next week when it is in my calendar is pretty hard. The rest of the actions that linger around for a long time on the To-Do list have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis but the important part is that they should be dealt with to keep your To-Do list lean and effective.

One last word on next actions that have lasted for more than two weeks on the To-Do list: Just doing them is also an option.